It’s always tougher for me to blog during summer school, and it will be especially so this summer. I’m teaching my usual load of three six-week summer classes, starting at 8:00AM and finishing around 3:00PM. What’s different is that the classroom in which I normally lecture (steps from my office) is undergoing renovations. I’m teaching my three classes in three separate buildings on campus, including a computer lab and a sprawling room in the main gymnasium. When I walked into my first class yesterday, there were no chairs in the room — my students had to sit on the floor, and the be-skirted had to stand. In my second class, I had 45 students enrolled in a classroom with a maximum fire code capacity of 40, and chairs for only 37. Life in the trenches indeed!
I’m not complaining, not really. I’ll be beginning my sixteenth year at Pasadena City College this fall, and this is my fourteenth summer session. My youngest students today were getting potty-trained when I started, and more and more these days, I learn of students whose parents are both younger than I am. Two days after Father’s day, I feel more paternal than ever.
This morning started at 4:45AM, as I wanted to get in a quick seven-miler before the heat set in. I’m participating in a volunteer event at the Kabbalah Centre in West Los Angeles tonight, so it will be more or less a non-stop eighteen hour day. I like busy, of course, except that it does give me precious little time to blog. I’ll see what I can squeeze in later.
And for those family and friends wanting an update, my wife called this morning from some remote jungle camp in Uganda, and is doing just fine. She’ll be home Saturday.
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